Active Memory (Mirador #3) By: Dan Wells | Review & Giveaway

Active Memory (Mirador #3)

By: Dan Wells

Genre: YA, Sci-fi, Dystopia

Rating: 4 stars

Release: February 13, 2018

Publisher: Balzer & Bay

Synopsis:
From Dan Wells, author of the New York Times bestselling Partials Sequence and the John Cleaver series, comes the third and final book in the dark, pulse-pounding, sci-fi neo-noir series that began with the acclaimed novel Bluescreen.

For all the mysteries teen hacker Marisa Carneseca has solved, there has been one that has always eluded her: the truth behind the car accident in which she lost her arm and a mob boss’ wife, Zenaida de Maldonado, lost her life. Even in a world where technology exists to connect everyone’s mind to one another, it would seem that some secrets can still remain hidden.

Those secrets rise violently to the surface, however, when Zenaida de Maldonado’s freshly severed hand shows up at the scene of a gangland shooting. If Zenaida is—or was—still alive, it means there’s even more about Marisa’s past that she doesn’t know. And when she and her friends start digging, they uncover a conspiracy that runs from the slums of Los Angeles to the very top of the world’s most powerful genetic engineering firm. If Mari wants the truth, she’s going to have to go through genetically enhanced agents, irritatingly attractive mob scions, and some bad relationships to get it.

Dan Wells’s widely acclaimed series continues with his most shocking, pulse-pounding, and visionary story yet

BOOK REVIEW & SERIES THOUGHTS

Out of the three books in this series, I think I like this one the best one. Active Memory finally places Marisa on the path to uncovering a hidden family secret about the day she lost her arm and the Maldonado family lost its Wife/Mother several years ago.

With this book finally handling the dark secrets of the past, in my opinion, the tension felt thicker, the stakes were higher, and within the first chapter I was pulled into the story. It was kind of like all of the anticipation Marisa has had leading up to this point really drove the story forward.

The unfortunate strain between Marisa and her father and the unexpected kinship that forms with Marisa and a LAPD detective on the case as well as the infamous, pretty boy that Marisa and her friends love to hate, Omar. Just made the whole book really fun and enjoyable for me.

Marisa is placed in the middle of a black market scheme, another shady corporate company, a gang war, trying to track down and protect her brother Chuy, protecting her family and her father and herself! Never mind the implications of her theories and motivations for chasing down a ghost and that ghost fighting back.

I am not a dystopian-genre reader, normally, but the super advanced technology in this book holds up. Oddly enough, my favorite parts about this story was reading about how the safest way Marisa and others could protect themselves and stay hidden from immanent threats and hackers was by going back to the “primitive” method of analog/ handwritten notes and “unplugging” from their djinnis.

Consistently, Marisa’s close friend, Bao remained one of my favorites throughout the series. Second to Sahara who has been incredible, fearless, strong and an extremely supportive friend and character to Marisa and if I had to pick one character to have a solo book/series on, I think it would be her.

While I did feel like I kind of guessed a few things when I read the first book a few years ago and while Ones and Zeros felt like an independent book of the series that centered on Marisa and the bond between her and her close friends, I would recommend giving that one a read as well because of how strong and in-sync the entire group come out of that adventure in the end.

Overall, this series has strong, smart and diverse female leads, discussions on social-political/social-economical issues that are easily relatable to our present society; close friendship bonds, a close, central family at its core. And Active Memory, was a good end to the series.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

New York Times bestselling author Dan Wells is best known for his horror series I AM NOT A SERIAL KILLER, of which the first book is now an award-winning movie through IFC Midnight. His other novels include THE HOLLOW CITY, a supernatural thriller about schizophrenia, EXTREME MAKEOVER, in which a beauty company destroys the world, and two young adult science fiction series: the post-apocalypse PARTIALS and the cyberpunk MIRADOR. He has written for television, on the upcoming science fiction series EXTINCT, and wrote and produced the horror comedy stage play A NIGHT OF BLACKER DARKNESS.

He cohosts the Hugo-winning podcast for aspiring writers called Writing Excuses, which has expanded to include its own writing conference. He also writes short fiction and game fiction, and edited the anthology ALTERED PERCEPTIONS to help raise funds for and awareness of mental illness. Dan lives in northern Utah with his wife, 6 children, and more than 400 boardgames.